Few people can say they have covered the Raptors for the 20 years of their existence. Doug Smith is one of them. Join him for the latest from around the NBA, current events and anything else he decides to talk about.

Words can come back to bite you, even if they aren't really true

So I’m in a joint killing time until I meet the boys for dinner and bugging folks back home is on hold for a moment so I’m surfing through the tweeter.

I see this from my friend Chris Johnson, formerly of The People’s Wire Service and now a big shot over at the pucks network.

“If the Clippers are worth $2 billion, when we have plenty of franchises that are worth that, if not more” – Gary Bettman.

Two immediate reactions:

Was Bettman drunk?

And

Was Bettman drunk?

First off, I think there’s a huge debate to be had whether the Clippers are “worth” $2 billion or whether it was just a pre-emptive price paid by a ridiculously wealthy man who wanted to be an NBA owner and was doing to do whatever it took to make sure that happened.

I can’t for the life of me imagine that it’s going to be a profit-making proposition on a year-to-year basis, the money just doesn’t work in my mind.

I think the “worth” of sports franchises is what you can get for them when you sell them and whether that’s enough to offset annual operating losses. And this was such an odd situation – a confluence of a family forced to sell and getting lucky enough to find someone dying to own a team with too much money – that I refuse to believe they’ll get, say, $3 billion for the team in a decade or 20 years.

But to Bettman’s point, I can’t see any hockey team being sold for that number under any circumstances. If there is one thing that makes it even remotely possible that a $2 billion price tag on a basketball team make sense, it’s that the league is such a global brand that the NBA itself adds extraordinary worldwide value to its teams.

That doesn’t happen with the pucks, no way. The sport is a non-factor on half of the Earth at least; the game itself doesn’t have the reach that the NBA does which means it doesn’t create the wealth that the NBA does which in turn doesn’t increase the value of its franchises nearly enough.

So while I think it’s silly to imagine an NBA team being worth $2 billion – and I can almost guarantee that’s a one-time zany price we’ll never see again – it’s out of this world silly to think there’s a hockey team that can match that value, let alone two or three.

One thing I will point out that is going to be very interesting to watch both in the NBA and now with the pucks.

The next time the leagues go to the table to strike a new deal with the players association it’s going to be awfully difficult for them to cry poor, or to even suggest the health of the teams is questionable, if one was sold for $2 billion in one league and the commissioner of another is openly suggesting he’s got more teams at that now-magical financial level.

I would think the players associations will pounce on that, I know some NBA players have already are salivating at the thought of negotiating against that franchise value, I can imagine the hockey guys will have Bettman’s words in their minds when it comes time to talk contract.

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I won’t do this for the whole series but what the heck, today’s okay, right?

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I have no idea how much interest we can stir up but I think and old fashioned IGBT around 9 p.m. might be good. Join in? We’ll try to step back from the sensory overload of the Raptors playoff ones, okay?

And please, if you’ve got those questions that you just can’t get off your mind, send ‘em along to
askdoug@thestar.ca
so we can get ahead of the weekend mail.

Thanks

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Oddest thing of Day 1 of The Trip That’s Too Long?

Gotta love a cabbie with some personality.

Get picked up at the airport in some minivan and the dude driving is quite the character.

He’s got “Disco Cab” stenciled all over the vehicle, which I find quite strange, but not when we’re driving, he hands me some cardboard 3D glasses, hits a button and this weird light show in 3-D is dancing across the ceiling of the car. Oh, and I get to keep the glasses, of course.

Then he asks where I’m from and when I tell him Toronto, I think he’s going to explode. Smiles all over the place, he tells me he was driving three hockey players from Toronto all over the place just recently and they were great guys. After he fidgets with the iPhone he’s got plugged in, all of a sudden Rush comes on and he’s singing away and sort of chair-dancing while he drives, apologizing that it’s not disco but that he’s sure I’ll like it.

I’m nice and polite and it’s a fun right and when he asks me if I like Brazilian BBQ and I tell him yes, he pulls out a card, signs it, hands it to me and tells me he’s buying my dessert if I go to Fogo de Chao that’s not far from our hotel.

Not a bad ride at all.

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I’m not sure England drawing 2-2 with Ecuador bodes well for what I think will be my undying World Cup support. I may need a new team by the knockout stage?

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I entirely get that sports leagues are all about self-promotion and since they all have their own television networks they are also dying for content but I really and truly fear for those who will sit around the set tonight and pay even the slightest bit of attention to the major league draft.

These are teenagers years away, it’s a bigger crapshoot than any draft in any sport and to sit and say “yeah, we got the guy we wanted!” while watching it unfold on TV is troubling.

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